Little time for studying?
Table of Contents
Study with little time?
From Wednesday on until Sunday we had a friend from Germany visiting us and staying at our place. Haven’t seen each other for some years it was clearly the goal to spend as much time together as possible. And besides that, there was also my job and a long planned hiking tour with friends. A busy week, full of fun things, but where to find the time for studying chess during days like these?
Luckily I could foresee that study time will be very limited from Tuesday evening on, I managed to play two OTB games with a friend on Monday at a Café and analyzed them right away in the evening after work even tho I was really tired. During the rest of the week I only managed to play some rapid games (10+0) in the morning before work and a short classical game yesterday evening.
Puzzles & Mating Patterns
For that I knew that there will be no time to sit down to seriously study with chess books, I focussed on tactics over the last days - while riding the bus or in some small breaks during the day. I used the lichess puzzles and started with Polgars 5333+1 chess puzzles. Sometimes with the big book at home before breakfast, sometimes online while on public transport:
I finally started with this book, and really right from the start with the mate in 1 patterns, after reading this blog post:
Post by GM Avetik Grigoryan
(And maybe this little incident which happened some days ago has also something to do with it: Niemann blundered mate in 1)
Quality Online Content
Furthermore I also focussed on quality videos and posts instead of watching Chess Shorts or playing blitz games (haven’t played a single online blitz game this year so far!). If I have no time to sit down with a board, I should at least find some time for good stuff to read or watch.
I really enjoyed the „training in January“ videos series from WGM Josefine Heinemann. They cover topics like
- How to analyze your own games
- How to know what to study
- How to learn a new opening
- Time management during games
and a lot more.
Here is her YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@josefineschach
Another really cool discovery was the bluesky account of IM Ilja Sirosh who posts a daily chess advice:
https://bsky.app/profile/imiljasirosh.bsky.social
Small book to carry along
One book was riding with me on the public transport this week. I don’t even know how many years have passed since I bought this book - and of course never read more than the introduction. It’s „Hot To Build Your Chess Opening Repertoire“ by Steve Giddins. I finally started it now because building up a repertoire is one of my goals for the year and probably because its quite small and easy to carry.
Reading the book while on my way from A to B is way easier now that it was some time ago, I’m sure about that! Serious study pays off!
Book on the publishers website with recommendations from players an authors
